Since Forbes hired me in 1995 to write a legal column, I’ve taken advantage of the great freedom the magazine grants its staff, to pursue stories about everything from books to billionaires. I’ve chased South Africa’s first black billionaire through a Cape Town shopping mall while admirers flocked around him, climbed inside the hidden chamber in the home of an antiquarian arms and armor dealer atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, and sipped Chateau Latour with one of Picasso’s grandsons in the Venice art museum of French tycoon François Pinault. I’ve edited the magazine’s Lifestyle section and opinion pieces by the likes of John Bogle and Gordon Bethune. As deputy leadership editor, these days I mostly write about careers and corporate social responsibility. I got my job at Forbes through a brilliant libertarian economist, Susan Lee, whom I used to put on television at MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Before that I covered law and lawyers for journalistic stickler, harsh taskmaster and the best teacher a young reporter could have had, Steven Brill.

How To Deal With A Younger Boss

In early 2009, when Forbes combined its online and magazine staffs, I found myself reporting to a younger boss for the first time in my 30-year career. It wasn’t easy. I knew my boss was smart and digitally savvy, but I chafed in the deputy role. I admit it: I felt both superior and a touch disdainful, just because of the age difference.

I credit both of us for weathering those rocky first months together. My boss had to put up with not only my grumpy moods but also my cluelessness about basic dot-com skills like search engine optimization, linking and effective web headlines. Her communication style, of frequent e-mails and instant messaging, was totally different from my familiar mode of dropping by and chatting face-to- face with a boss.

According to human resource and career consultants, older workers are reporting to younger bosses more and more these days. A recent survey by the jobs website CareerBuilder found that 43% of workers 35 and older said they currently work for a younger boss. CareerBuilder used Harris Interactive to administer the online survey of 5,000 workers.

Technological changes have a lot to do with the trend. In my field, the rise of online content and social media means that we dinosaurs need to figure out how to get along with younger, wiser superiors.

To that end, I interviewed two consultants who have carved out a specialty in this area, and a psychologist, Billie A. Pivnick, who teaches in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College.

Robin Throckmorton, co-author of Bridging the Generation Gap: How to Get Radio Babies, Boomers, Gen Xers and Gen Yers to Work Together and Achieve More, encourages older workers to take the initiative and have a conversation with their boss about the boss’s favored mode of communication. (One demerit for me: My boss asked me to set up an instant messaging account. I felt overwhelmed and never did.)

Claire Raines, co-author of Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in Your Workplace, agrees that older workers should adapt to a younger boss’s communication style rather than try to fight or change it. Older workers have a lot to learn about things like the difference between texting and e-mail.

A tip: Young people assume that a missed cellphone call serves the same purpose as a voicemail message asking for a call back. It makes sense. Who wants to sit there forever while a tedious automated voice drones, “Please wait for the tone before recording your message …”

Even when older workers make an effort to learn new modes of communication, they shouldn’t expect reciprocity, Raines advises. You need to adopt your boss’s habits. Don’t expect her to learn yours.

Throckmorton and Raines agree that older workers shouldn’t assume that their age wins them respect from a younger supervisor. “You have to earn that respect,” says Throckmorton. Another common misplaced assumption: that the young boss wants or needs parenting or mentoring. Older workers have a tendency to hover, Throckmorton observes. “That doesn’t work,” she notes.

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I choose to treat everyone I come in contact with respect. This may be from my upbringing, and also my experience in the military as a young junior officer and U.S. Naval Academy graduate. I have found that while you are in the process of earning respect, you earn it faster when you are actively listening to other’s experiences as you gain an understanding of the way it “was,” before you step in with your own two cents and implement new policies. I still find myself in the young bracket, however, I do not presume that others with more life experience should automatically respect me, because I may know more technically than they do. I wanted to comment on your article Susan, because I think it is a very important distinction as traditional roles are reversed either due to age and/or experience, instead of it being a who respects who first–I think it should be more of a mutual how can we use both of our experiences and knowledge to work more efficiently and better together. And as you come to a mutual understanding of what works best for the organization based on everyone’s strengths–then this is where the earned mutual respect happens. But it is in approaching everyone with respect and valuing strengths in whatever shape or form first–that this way is feasible, and everyone is honored.

I also know that this is more of a “female” perspective on how everyone can be included, but it is also the way we’re taught as JO’s to come into a new platoon or company to use the experience of senior enlisted non-commissioned officer’s so that group integrity and morale stays high while we transition into the unit and see to the welfare of our troops. It is a practice that corporate would do well to adopt, instead of expecting respect to be given based on title.

Older does not necessarily mean wiser. I am currently managing employees 10 years older than me with less maturity than I expect of their age. I don’t expect these guys to have the EQ of Carl Jung, but I do expect them to be able to keep in check of their tempers. I don’t think your article pointed out the key thing here, as you focused entirely on technology expertise. The hard truth is, sometimes people just don’t become as wise as they think with their age. That’s probably why they are being managed by younger people. Now that’s a hard truth for anyone to swallow, but unfortunately it’s the case sometime.